Murder By Pride is my very first Stryper album. I don’t know how it compares to the “classics”, but I’m enjoying it. There are a few spots where it borders on getting very cheesy (“Alive”, “I Believe”), but the songs are good enough to be guilty pleasures for me. The guitars on “I Believe” sound very much like Creed, but I still enjoy the song.

“4 Leaf Clover” and “Murder By Pride” are my favorite tracks and they do a great job of blending 80s hard rock with a modern sound. The rest of the album is full solid hard rockers, which is more than I was expecting. I had it in my head that the chance of some lame pop rock/”Honestly” songs were going to be pretty high, but it just wasn’t the case.

Like I said, I don’t know if this holds a candle to old school Stryper, but it’s got me interested in taking a listen to find out.

The band does a faithful cover of Boston’s “Peace of Mind”. It had better be faithful since Tom Scholz plays on it! Of course, Michael handles co-vocals & guitar for that band following the passing of Brad Delp.

I could not find any info on why, but for whatever reason, founding member and drummer Robert Sweet (Michael’s brother) did not play on this album and a session player filled in. At least that’s what I’ve read online (even though the album credits list both Sweet and Aronoff on drums). He is scheduled to tour with the band though.

I bought this the day it came out but I finally unwrapped it last night and gave it a spin. You can definitely hear why Boston grabbed Michael Sweet to handle lead vocals because he has a similar voice to the late Brad Delp. I didn’t look at the tracklisting so ‘Peace Of Mind’ was a surprise.

Comparing this album to the Stryper of old is a hard thing to do. I was a young Metalhead back when Stryper hit the racks and I enjoyed their Christian Hard Rock/Metal but it was all about the sound of the time. Think of the Def Leps/Poisons/etc, the glam “hair” bands, Sunset Strip bands but with a lot of Christian references & lyrics. Murder By Pride is heavier and the first listen was inevitably a comparison listen. Now I will give it regular rotation.

If you want good early Stryper you can’t really go wrong with any of the first 3 albums but I would say TO HELL WITH THE DEVIL (1986) captures the band at their peak.